12 Wild NML Predictions for 2018

So 2017 was pretty crazy, mostly in the real world, but also in our little NML/forum one. Will 2018 be just as surprising? All in the spirit of good fun, here are my 12 wild predictions. Feel free to add your own.

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January 2018:NG introduces Ed Peletier as a new hero. Even though his leader trait (hit the face) is arguable the best ever because it reduces body shots, the community draws the line after Negan, the Governor and Dwight and refuses to play with a wife beater as a hero. In more positive news, @Terminates has sharply increased her weekly star count to 12,000 and is the first to hit 200,000 after she says she decided that she ``no longer wanted to be a slacker and now play as a pro.''

February 2018:@Shteevie crunches the data and discovers that even after several buffs, no one has ever used Rick because his leader trait sucks. In a desperate move to make him as popular as he is in the show, NG now gives you a free radio every time you use him. But Rick still sucks and there's still no one who'll use him.

March 2018Due to NML's success, AMC invites a few NG staff members to do cameos on the show as shooting to TWD Season 9 starts. But sadly, @Teeceezy ends up being cut from the final version. He plays a guy who has to answer Daryl when he'll finish building a fence and refuses to deliver his line (which is: ``In exactly two days''). Instead @Teeceezy insists repeatedly to use a more vague formulation, to the frustration of the director.

April 2018:NG restores the interrupt and wrestler traits to their former glory and announces that gold crates will no longer contain green gear. Sadly, it turns out to be a cruel April's Fool by a new forum administrator standing in for @Teeceezy , who's not yet back from the TWD film set in Atlanta.

June 2018:Update 3.0 is released. NG tightens further the grip on badge fragments (you now have to pay a pint of your blood for an epic fragment in the store) but also finally introduces a permanent fix to the much-hated supply maxing problem: Now the tomatoes you farm rot after a short time, giving you a 2.5 million supply drain per month -- that means no player will ever be able to max out again! Problem solved.

July 2018:It's time for a forum competition and @Teeceezy asks what the community members would change if they were in control of Next Games. All contributors get a badge with NG's logo and the winner a small radio bundle. Unfortunately, @zbot misses @Teeceezy's original post and bans every contributor in the thread for violating Forum Rule #10: Do not try to speak on behalf of Next Games or any of the staff of Next Games.

August 2018:@Movado becomes the first player with 15-star survivors after burning through 90,000 radios on a Wednesday afternoon. It turns out that the 15th star unlocks new features, allowing your survivors to fly, teleport and shoot flames from their eyes.

September 2018: During a jackpot weekend event, a player from Guatemala becomes the first in the game's history to actually get good rewards in more than one of the nine gold crates he opens after a mission. Sadly, at the same time, NG announces there'll be yet another council upgrade next month. So the Guatemala player's pull of two legendary base-level 28 hunter rifles with gold caliber won't be useful for long.

October 2018:Update 3.1 is released. Among the changes is a ``rebalancing of the over-powered assault weapon wide spread.'' From now on, the spread only works if the following conditions are met: The shot must NOT be a body shot, BUT there's a 33% chance of that being negated if you have a hero in the team, AND you get a bonus to that chance equal to the number of pink starts in your team, multiplied by the level difference between you and the enemy (in your favour), MINUS half the difficulty of the mission level.

The forum decides to hire @dlich full-time to do calculations to help understand the math.

November 2018NG introduces a new hero, but is running out of characters from the show. The hero is ``That Guy You Often See In The Background In Alexandria'' or TGYOSITBIA. He becomes a massive hit due to his ninja-type leader trait, which makes walkers (and everybody else) unaware of his presence.

December 2018NG finally announces there will be another radio weekend event. The forum celebrates. But due to a technical glitch you get Eugene tokens instead of radios -- which NG says is almost the same, so it'll just stay like for the duration of the weekend.

The forum commits mass suicide.

Oh, and Stu turns up (apparently he was under the forum couch cushions the whole time). He's now the only member of the forum, and in a cruel reversal of fates, he repeatedly opens threads asking, where's everyone else?